In this post I will talk about the genre. Unwind is a Science Fiction story.
A good example of evidence is the text at the start mentioning 'The Heartland War... over abortion' this is probably about some sort of near future event which causes a Dystopia. Dystopian futures are very common in Science-Fiction, an example is H.G.Wells 'The Time Machine', 'The Hunger Games' 'Total Recall', 'Metropolis', 'Blade Runner' and 'The Terminator'. The word Dystopian comes from Greek it stand for "bad place" and means the opposite to a Utopia, the Dystopian in some manner is undesirable the term and its meaning was coined in Thomas Moore's book Utopia completed in 1516.
One thing to note is that Dystopian fiction has increased in the production technologies of Film, Video and Print, this is due to public view with the increase in criticism over governments and corporations. 53 government control Dystopian films have been released since 9/11, (though soon of these are adaptions of books and remakes of older films) and 64 examples of Dystopian literature have been published in the same time. The public view since 9/11 has been that the world is unfair, the worlds leaders are incompetent and corrupted. Post-Apocalyptic is another type of Dystopian film on the rise, 21 films of this type have been realised in the same time is the previously mentioned examples, many of the apocalypses that are the back story to these films are explained as being wars and environmental disasters caused by government decisions.
Science Fiction thirty years ago in the 1980s, were for a majority set in the far future out of the reach of our reach or featured extra-terratial beings, prime examples include Star Trex and E. T. these films were on the rise and canon films due to the success of Star Wars, the first Science Fiction blockbuster.
Unwind classifies as a film in the terms of Production Technology, film is a visual media that is distributed to a wide audience, the definition of a short films is "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less". And the Distributing Method is thorough the Internet via YouTube, the people that made this production made it for non-profit reasons, which is why this is on YouTube, (in most cases a Non-profit) organisation, this may be also the reason why the plot of the short is not the same as the book it is based on.
Information from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dystopian_films, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dystopian_literature, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_film, Note - something information maybe inaccurate.
26th of February 2013 update.
Narrative
The narrative of the short is single strand, linear and close-ended. The evidence for this can be seen in the short. Single Strand narrative means that the story focuses only on one character, this is evident as the story and visual focuses on one character, the girls have the unwinding operation, this is mainly due to the point of view shots. The evidence for the linear structure is because the story is in chronological order, the girl wakes up and the operations goes on order and end with the girl becoming unable to see, the short starts in black and ends in black, this is also evidence for the closed-ended story, as are main character the girls is practically dead, as she is no longer able to live a human life going into a comma state.
Closed-endings in shorts are often common as it has to tell a story in a short amount of time, of course in many cases short films don't explain there story in the short amount of time, leaving the audience wondering and trying to piece the story, in many cases it works and people as able to figure it out. In this short not a lot of facts about the world are given, who is in charge, what the laws are, what happens to the people who are unwound, all that is given is that this programme was passed as a compromise to end a war and the life the life of the doctor, talking about his son starting Karate, and that the operation in the short is his fifth of that particular day. But in this short it works due the fact the environment is a dystopia as mentioned earlier, is undesirable to us, so the answers to this question may leave is enraged and disgusted, so it may be better if we don't know.
Tuesday 19 February 2013
Monday 11 February 2013
Unwind short film -Post 2
The Selection of content.
The words: The majority of words come thorough dialogue, but also a back story text at the start of the film, personally I don't see why, they could have added speech as well, I go to a film to watch not read, the reason why this is here is to give exposition on the world the film is set in, a dystopian future, which in todays' world is common in science fiction, whether it is film or literature, the use of it is to inform the audience about the world the film is set in order to draw the audience ans get them interested in the story. Most of the words are not complicated as the majority of the dialogue is a conversation between a patient and her nurse. There is another conversation between the Nurse and Doctor going through procedure. The Nurse is trying to comfort the girl, reassuring her while this operation is going on, the conversasion is not really personnal as the nurse seems to say standard, pre-written cliched sentences, she doesn't ask about the girls personnal life and though the girl does ask questions the nurse does not fully answer them e.g. "Do I get a funeral?" "You won't die, you just won't live", the nurse's job in relation to the story is to give exposition on the operation, not much I admit but exposition is needed in science-fiction as the science of this fictional world needs some explanation (even if it is fictional and in many cause just ridiculous). Also the doctor just seems to talk about lets get to the next part, he's not concerned if the girl can hear him, he's just doing a job.
Images: the imagery is very interesting, there are two shots which cut back and forth: the shot of the patient's eyes, and the shot of what the girl is seeing through those eyes. The shot of her eyes seems very powerful, the old saying that the eyes are the windows to the soul is used by the film makers to an advantage, all we see of the patient are her eyes and the little surrounding areas of her face, we see her eyes and hear her voice, very powerful. The point of view shot are very powerful as well as we see what could her last visions as a functioning human being, it make us feel like we are in her position. The term 'The eyes are the window to the soul' is a traditional English proverb, the soul is inside of you and the way the soul views the world is through the eyes, but a window can be see through both ways. We can see the girl through the twitches of her eyes almost as if we see her soul and the point of view shots are there is if it is us and our souls that are viewing this. This allows the audience to invest in the story, it also shows something outside the box, something we have not seen before which makes it more memorable.
Sound: the first sound we hear is of one those heart beat machines. The beat seems haunting, and make us feel a sense of unease. The beat is almost like a ticking clock counting down, but we don't fully know what it is counting down to, the fear of the unknown is a the fear that what we can't understand, we can't control, we know that it is counting down to something but what? There is also a small musical beat which like the heart beat creates a sense of unease. We hear the sounds of the medical equipment which all sound horrible and grotesque, adding to the tension, while the nurse explains what is going to happen she doesn't explain what is happening and again the fear of the unknown reemerges. The sounds seem unusual to use as we don't hear them on a regular basis, the metallic, clean feel of the sound adds to science-fiction element is many of the sounds seem futuristic, thous making us as the audience know it is the future and the tools and technologies within the short as future technologies yet to be used by us today. The sounds add to the world of the story and allows the audience to get accustom to this world.
Sequence: The sequence of events is simple enough, it works on linear event, we see the operation to 'Unwind' the beat of the music becomes a ticking clock, there is no real change, unlike in movie trailers how they start slow and as the trailer progresses it gets faster and confusing with action, here it is consistently slow and quiet. The short film messes with our expectations, as we have grown accustomed to, this short film has roughly the same amount of time in a theatrical trailer, we expect something to happen and the end to become more chaotic, but it stays at the same level of pace, the way this short film plays with expectations adds to the off-kilter nature of the short. The sequence of events seem to work like a machine working at a steady speed, like a higher authority has made scheduled the time of this world, this relates back to the dystopian future element of the genre.
Colour: The colours in the film also add to this uneasy feel, the hospital staff are wearing blue, normally the colour of sadness or of calm collectiveness, the other colours are in grey tone, dull and boring, it make us feel depressed that the last thing this girl may see are sad and dull colours. This colours also add a metallic, clean, cold and calculated feel like is a machine made the room in those colours and had pick out those colours, it having no emotions to identify the mood of those colours, the feel makes us connect to the science fiction element as those colours are would be used in the future. Again this establishes the world how it looks and allows the audience to see the world in some minds this may be what the target audience in visaged the world as.
Fonts: There is only one type of font, which appears in the back story at the beginning, this font is very uniform and futuristic, which implies that this takes place in a dystopian future, as the back story explains. This is slight but it would be expected that the font of a genre would fit to that, the uniform style were it has been designed to perfect proportion and calculated looks makes us identify it is futuristic and there for must be for science fictional purposes.
The target audience for this short film would include the fans of the book, all these elements together are suppose to form what the audience would image while reading the book. There is also the fact that this would inspire those who have not read the book the interest to read it, being this is a prequel to the events of the book.
The words: The majority of words come thorough dialogue, but also a back story text at the start of the film, personally I don't see why, they could have added speech as well, I go to a film to watch not read, the reason why this is here is to give exposition on the world the film is set in, a dystopian future, which in todays' world is common in science fiction, whether it is film or literature, the use of it is to inform the audience about the world the film is set in order to draw the audience ans get them interested in the story. Most of the words are not complicated as the majority of the dialogue is a conversation between a patient and her nurse. There is another conversation between the Nurse and Doctor going through procedure. The Nurse is trying to comfort the girl, reassuring her while this operation is going on, the conversasion is not really personnal as the nurse seems to say standard, pre-written cliched sentences, she doesn't ask about the girls personnal life and though the girl does ask questions the nurse does not fully answer them e.g. "Do I get a funeral?" "You won't die, you just won't live", the nurse's job in relation to the story is to give exposition on the operation, not much I admit but exposition is needed in science-fiction as the science of this fictional world needs some explanation (even if it is fictional and in many cause just ridiculous). Also the doctor just seems to talk about lets get to the next part, he's not concerned if the girl can hear him, he's just doing a job.
Images: the imagery is very interesting, there are two shots which cut back and forth: the shot of the patient's eyes, and the shot of what the girl is seeing through those eyes. The shot of her eyes seems very powerful, the old saying that the eyes are the windows to the soul is used by the film makers to an advantage, all we see of the patient are her eyes and the little surrounding areas of her face, we see her eyes and hear her voice, very powerful. The point of view shot are very powerful as well as we see what could her last visions as a functioning human being, it make us feel like we are in her position. The term 'The eyes are the window to the soul' is a traditional English proverb, the soul is inside of you and the way the soul views the world is through the eyes, but a window can be see through both ways. We can see the girl through the twitches of her eyes almost as if we see her soul and the point of view shots are there is if it is us and our souls that are viewing this. This allows the audience to invest in the story, it also shows something outside the box, something we have not seen before which makes it more memorable.
Sound: the first sound we hear is of one those heart beat machines. The beat seems haunting, and make us feel a sense of unease. The beat is almost like a ticking clock counting down, but we don't fully know what it is counting down to, the fear of the unknown is a the fear that what we can't understand, we can't control, we know that it is counting down to something but what? There is also a small musical beat which like the heart beat creates a sense of unease. We hear the sounds of the medical equipment which all sound horrible and grotesque, adding to the tension, while the nurse explains what is going to happen she doesn't explain what is happening and again the fear of the unknown reemerges. The sounds seem unusual to use as we don't hear them on a regular basis, the metallic, clean feel of the sound adds to science-fiction element is many of the sounds seem futuristic, thous making us as the audience know it is the future and the tools and technologies within the short as future technologies yet to be used by us today. The sounds add to the world of the story and allows the audience to get accustom to this world.
Sequence: The sequence of events is simple enough, it works on linear event, we see the operation to 'Unwind' the beat of the music becomes a ticking clock, there is no real change, unlike in movie trailers how they start slow and as the trailer progresses it gets faster and confusing with action, here it is consistently slow and quiet. The short film messes with our expectations, as we have grown accustomed to, this short film has roughly the same amount of time in a theatrical trailer, we expect something to happen and the end to become more chaotic, but it stays at the same level of pace, the way this short film plays with expectations adds to the off-kilter nature of the short. The sequence of events seem to work like a machine working at a steady speed, like a higher authority has made scheduled the time of this world, this relates back to the dystopian future element of the genre.
Colour: The colours in the film also add to this uneasy feel, the hospital staff are wearing blue, normally the colour of sadness or of calm collectiveness, the other colours are in grey tone, dull and boring, it make us feel depressed that the last thing this girl may see are sad and dull colours. This colours also add a metallic, clean, cold and calculated feel like is a machine made the room in those colours and had pick out those colours, it having no emotions to identify the mood of those colours, the feel makes us connect to the science fiction element as those colours are would be used in the future. Again this establishes the world how it looks and allows the audience to see the world in some minds this may be what the target audience in visaged the world as.
Fonts: There is only one type of font, which appears in the back story at the beginning, this font is very uniform and futuristic, which implies that this takes place in a dystopian future, as the back story explains. This is slight but it would be expected that the font of a genre would fit to that, the uniform style were it has been designed to perfect proportion and calculated looks makes us identify it is futuristic and there for must be for science fictional purposes.
The target audience for this short film would include the fans of the book, all these elements together are suppose to form what the audience would image while reading the book. There is also the fact that this would inspire those who have not read the book the interest to read it, being this is a prequel to the events of the book.
Tuesday 5 February 2013
Unwind - Short film Post 1
I have started with a Short film called Unwind, the propose for the film is to advertise a novel with the same name. The Short is science fiction due to the Novel being set in a Dystopian future.
The market is niche, the audience will be fans of science fiction and those fan who enjoy the Dystopian sub-genre of science fiction. One thing that put me off early was that the short film was released on YouTube with standard licencing meaning that anyone could watch it.
The market is niche, the audience will be fans of science fiction and those fan who enjoy the Dystopian sub-genre of science fiction. One thing that put me off early was that the short film was released on YouTube with standard licencing meaning that anyone could watch it.
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